Maximum sentence for Mulvihill
14:32

Paul Darren Mulvihill is sentenced to 29 years behind bars for the murder of Rachelle Yeo.

news.com.au

20 Apr 2014

News

Security cameras show Paul Mulvihill at North Ryde's Courtyard Marriott Hotel on the evening of Rachelle Yeo's death.Source: Channel 9

Paul Darren Mulvihill sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl

Incident happened at Mulvihill’s engagement party

Mulvihill is currently serving a maximum 29 years in jail for murder

IT should have been the night former rugby star and convicted murderer Paul Darren Mulvihill was thinking only about the future with his bride-to-be.

Instead, as the celebration party for his engagement was in full swing, he allegedly sexually assaulted a 12-year-old girl, the first of a series of “opportunistic” attacks that lasted for years.

The victim, who can’t be named for legal reasons, told police the first attack occurred during a party at a house in Queensland in 1987. Mulvihill allegedly told her that, if she reported him, her family “would blame” her and “fall apart completely”.

“He thought he could get away with anything. I was just thinking ‘how much can a person get away with’.” Victim

Paul Darren Mulvihill as he leaves King Street courts in the city.Source: News Corp Australia

The woman said she made the allegations to police during a statement in August, 2012, that was used by officers investigating Mulvihill for murdering his ex-mistress Rachelle Yeo.

The woman heard a media report that Mulvihill had been charged and agreed to be interviewed by the officer leading the investigation, Detective Sergeant Darrin Batchelor, at Burleigh Heads police station.

She said she intends to make further statements to police, with the hope of having him extradited to Queensland and charged.

“I felt guilty that I had never said anything because no one had ever set boundaries for Mulvihill,” she said.

“He thought he could get away with anything. I was just thinking ‘how much can a person get away with’.”

Mulvihill, 46, a former representative rugby player, was sentenced to a maximum 29 years in jail for stabbing Ms Yeo to death inside her northern beaches apartment in July, 2012.

After Ms Yeo called off an affair with Mulvihill, who was married with children, he responded with an obsessive campaign of stalking and intimidation which ended with him murdering Ms Yeo.

At the engagement party to his now ex-wife Celine Carroll, the victim claimed Mulvihill cornered her under the house and allegedly “shoved me against a square concrete pillar and forced his tongue in my mouth” and “rubbed his hands all over my body”.

“Then he strolled back into the party, to his friends and family.”

In another alleged incident, the woman, whose hair turned grey soon after the first attack, accused Mulvihill of having sex but telling her: “It isn’t sex, because he wouldn’t move in and out.”

The woman alleged “within a short period of time” from the first alleged incident, Mulvihill became “more forceful in a molesting way”. She claimed six alleged attacks or incidents.

Murdered woman Rachelle Yeo. FacebookSource: News Limited

Mulvihill moved to Sydney to pursue a rugby career with Gordon and Manly, but when he was due to return in 1990 the woman felt “I couldn’t live with him coming back and resuming his behaviour,” her statement said.

The evidence against Mulvihill at his trial painted him as a brazen risk taker and killer who tried to create his own alternate version of how Ms Yeo died.

He claimed he went to Ms Yeo’s apartment to talk to her before she lunged at him with a knife. He said t she was stabbed twice, in the neck and heart during the struggle.

A photo Mulvihill posted as his Facebook profile after being released on $800,000 bail in October, 2012, shows him wearing a hoodie with the words “femme fatale” emblazoned across the chest.

“It was a fair indicator of what his defence case was going to be,” a source said.

Just days after getting out on bail, Mulvihill set up an account on dating website RSVP and made advances to two women.

Mulvihill’s profile listed his interests as “travel” — despite only being allowed to travel from a Randwick house to the police station.

Ex wife Mrs Carroll gave evidence at Mulvihill’s trial that he stalked her following their breakup, including grabbing her around the neck outside her apartment and telling her she “needed to talk to him”.

She told the court of a 1992 incident where he broke in to her house, hid under her bed and jumped out yelling “I’m going to kill you” when she arrived home with her sister and another man.

Years later, Mulvihill enrolled his children in the school where Mrs Carroll worked as a teacher. She made sure she never taught his children.

Earlier he had enrolled his children at a preschool across the road from where Mrs Carroll sent her children.

“The first time I saw him there he looked at me, not surprised, he had this smile on his face — he was smug,” Carroll said.

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